Swedish modal particles as markers of engagement: Evidence from distribution and frequency

The paper analyses the Swedish modal particles ju and val as markers of engagement. This analysis finds support in the distribution and frequency of ju and val in a corpus of spoken Swedish along with an examination of existing accounts concerning the semantics of the investigated forms. Engagement encodes differences in the distribution of knowledge and/or attention between the speaker and the addressee, where the basic semantic contrast consists of the speaker asserting an assumption about the addressee's knowledge of/attention to an event as either shared, or non-shared with the speaker. Ju and val are paradigmatically contrastive in signaling shared access to an event from the point of view of the speaker, or the addressee: ju signals shared access to an event and at the same time places the epistemic authority with the speaker, and val signals shared access to an event, placing the epistemic authority with the addressee. Analytical support for ju and val as markers of engagement comes from the distribution of both forms with first person (jag), second person (du), and generic (man) subject pronouns.